Roubini, From Doom To Less-Doom

Nouriel Roubini, head of Roubini Global Economics (RGEMonitor.com) and a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University, has shared some thoughts today for more gloom and doom ahead.

He was speaking today at a risk conference in Southern California, and CNBC was able to grab a few minutes of his time for a quick television interview.  He was way ahead of the curve on this meltdown, and he has been negative on the economy and financial sector.  Today he was not positive, but he may be slightly less negative.  From someone named “Dr. Doom” by the public that could be good enough.

For starters, Roubini noted that we are only 15 months through the recession and this one could end up being longer than the 24- month average.  He expects no V-shaped recovery and believes we are in for a long U-shaped recovery, and there is still a chance that this will just be a long L-shaped recession (one with a long period of stagnation and combined with falling prices as demand dries up) like Japan.

As far as banks, he still thinks you need a government takeover with a rapid clean-up of their books and a rapid return to the private sector.  He noted that if you don’t like the nationalization word then you can fall back on receivership.  He also still notes that economists and analysts still have estimates too high and things can get worse in the markets.

Roubini also said that the stimulus package is too back-end loaded that needs to be larger up front.  He noted that in the stimulus only $200 billion comes this year, but the savings and tax cuts make it more like $125 billion.

If you want some good news out of this, Roubini believes that the chances of a total meltdown are less than they were a year ago.  He still maintains that most financial institutions are insolvent and this looks more like a death of 1,000 cuts.  But still, this sounds far less than “on the verge of systematic collapse” compared to last year.

None of this sounds like good news.  Keep in mind that the guys who generally get the big call right the first time often get too deep into the call and that keep them from being able to see the “less-bad news as good news” like the markets tend to look for.

How many mega-bulls ever get their bearish end of the bull market calls right?  Some do, but it sure seems like they get hung up at the top.  We have no questions about Roubini’s analysis nor his views.  He did an incredible job in his predictions.  But it is still not hard to ask, “What if he’s wearing that Dr. Doom Mask too long?”

This was not really the gist of the interview on CNBC today, but we just noticed now how the CNBC interview caption on the CNBC site notes how Dr. Doom could become “Dr. Boom” in the summary.

JON C. OGG